A Mother Was Threatened for Breastfeeding Publicly – But She Fired Back

With so many women sharing their public breastfeeding photos — at places like Target and their very own weddings — it seems almost crazy to think that a woman could get threatened for taking care of her baby's needs publicly. But in Columbus, Georgia, a woman was threatened with arrest on September 25 after she was seen breastfeeding in a Piggly Wiggly, the Ledger-Enquirer reports.

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The woman, Savannah Shukla, was reportedly in the checkout line when she started to breastfeed her one-month-old without a cover-up. Deputy Raymond Zipata allegedly approached her and told her she needed to cover herself up. Why? Because it could offend people. (Uh, look away, then and recall that you might have been a breastfed baby at some point.) He claimed he could see her nipple.

Shukla raised an interesting point: If Zapata was able to see the areola of her nipple, why was he looking that closely?

"For Deputy Zipata to have seen my areola means he would've had to be staring very intently at the breast my 1-month-old was nursing on," Shukla said in the formal complaint, which, though filed on the day of the incident, was released on Friday.

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Shukla, however, knew about a Georgia law that protects her right to breastfeed publicly, and she knew she was not out of line. She shared a furious post on Facebook, particularly angry about how Zipata allegedly said, "You just think you know what the law says and if your nipple becomes exposed I really don't want to have to arrest you or you be arrested for being offensive. This isn't like the First Amendment where you can say something offensive."

Some people knew that she was in the right. Shortly after the incident, Muscogee County Sheriff John Darr took to Facebook to publicly apologize to Shukla where he stated, "this investigation is ongoing and the action to be taken shall be determined at the conclusion of the investigation. However, regardless of the outcome, we would like to ensure that a situation like this does not happen again in the future. We have sent out a reminder to all of our deputies."

Though her story went viral on Facebook shortly after the incident, the full official complaint was not officially released until recently, thereby allowing this important story to be recirculated and the conversation to be back into the forefront of public conversation.

And the conversation is important: Women should know the rights they have in their states, and breastfeeding is something that's totally normal. And there's no need to be offended by nipples.

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